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The Loom Tree
Not yet published
Expected 30 Jun 26
Ninth House
meets Babel for fans of myth and folklore in this contemporary fantasy about a Korean-American college student at a magical university where fairy tales intersect with family heritage to unleash powers beyond imagining.
“You always wanted magic to be real.”
Sharon and her daughter V’s points of origin hold common threads—both Korean American teenagers, raised by single mothers and searching for identity in the California suburbs. But during a Finals week celebration, high schooler V, compelled by strange impulses, crawls into a hollow tree trunk. That night in a fever haze, she sees gleaming strands of illegible text hovering over her body—flowing between her and her mother, leading to a long-forgotten diary.
With the aid of a luminous quill, a fountainhead of Sharon’s memories spill onto the faded pages. V witnesses her mother map out her past through drawings, diagrams, and reclaimed histories of her brief time at Alvsdahl, an exclusive East Coast college. Here, legacies and heiresses claimed descent from Bluebeard or Cinderella, grappling for control over family stories that could grant them terrifying abilities or burn them to ash. An Asian girl with an unknown inheritance was no one—until her discoveries cracked open Alvsdahl’s secrets.
Sharon’s rewritten narrative—of classroom rivalries, animal professors, debauchery in the woods, threatening Godmothers, and world-shattering powers—unfolds line by line as V desperately tries to help her mother, ultimately learning how to wield Sharon’s story to transform them both.
Lyrical and tender, Angela Mi Young Hur’s The Loom Tree is a magical campus novel centering two young women walking the thorny path toward adulthood, the fractures between parents and their children, and the global mythologies connecting us all.
“You always wanted magic to be real.”
Sharon and her daughter V’s points of origin hold common threads—both Korean American teenagers, raised by single mothers and searching for identity in the California suburbs. But during a Finals week celebration, high schooler V, compelled by strange impulses, crawls into a hollow tree trunk. That night in a fever haze, she sees gleaming strands of illegible text hovering over her body—flowing between her and her mother, leading to a long-forgotten diary.
With the aid of a luminous quill, a fountainhead of Sharon’s memories spill onto the faded pages. V witnesses her mother map out her past through drawings, diagrams, and reclaimed histories of her brief time at Alvsdahl, an exclusive East Coast college. Here, legacies and heiresses claimed descent from Bluebeard or Cinderella, grappling for control over family stories that could grant them terrifying abilities or burn them to ash. An Asian girl with an unknown inheritance was no one—until her discoveries cracked open Alvsdahl’s secrets.
Sharon’s rewritten narrative—of classroom rivalries, animal professors, debauchery in the woods, threatening Godmothers, and world-shattering powers—unfolds line by line as V desperately tries to help her mother, ultimately learning how to wield Sharon’s story to transform them both.
Lyrical and tender, Angela Mi Young Hur’s The Loom Tree is a magical campus novel centering two young women walking the thorny path toward adulthood, the fractures between parents and their children, and the global mythologies connecting us all.
- GenresDark Academia
416 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 30, 2026
101 people want to read
About the author
Angela Mi Young Hur
3 books95 followersAngela Hur received a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in Creative Writing from Notre Dame, where she won the Sparks Fellowship and Sparks Prize.
Folklorn was included in The New York Times Book Review’s Top 10 Sci-fi/Fantasy of ‘21 and NPR’s Books We Love. Also featured in Newsweek, The Boston Globe, LitHub & elsewhere. The novel was also optioned by AMC TV Networks for series development. (Now no longer, but what a ride!)
Before publication, Folklorn was chosen by Kelly Link for a Tin House novel mentorship through the Tin House Summer Workshop.
Hur has taught English Lit & Creative Writing at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in Seoul, Korea. She’s also taught for Writopia, a non-profit providing creative writing workshops for children & teens.
(*note: The Queens of K-Town was published by MacAdam/Cage in ‘07, but she wrote it in 3 months and it definitely shows. She doesn’t get royalties. It was like her demo tape, so Folklorn is her true debut.)
bluesky: @angelahur.bsky.social
insta: @angela.miyoung.hur
Folklorn was included in The New York Times Book Review’s Top 10 Sci-fi/Fantasy of ‘21 and NPR’s Books We Love. Also featured in Newsweek, The Boston Globe, LitHub & elsewhere. The novel was also optioned by AMC TV Networks for series development. (Now no longer, but what a ride!)
Before publication, Folklorn was chosen by Kelly Link for a Tin House novel mentorship through the Tin House Summer Workshop.
Hur has taught English Lit & Creative Writing at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in Seoul, Korea. She’s also taught for Writopia, a non-profit providing creative writing workshops for children & teens.
(*note: The Queens of K-Town was published by MacAdam/Cage in ‘07, but she wrote it in 3 months and it definitely shows. She doesn’t get royalties. It was like her demo tape, so Folklorn is her true debut.)
bluesky: @angelahur.bsky.social
insta: @angela.miyoung.hur
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
2026
March 9, 2026ANHPI TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books
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February 5, 2026An adult literary fantasy written for all of us children of fairy tales, about preserving our stories and histories and passing them on, defying those who seek to deny, diminish or erase us.
My take on “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” and Ungnyeo the Bear Woman of Korean origin myth, set on a college campus and stretching across a dual timeline between a mother and a daughter. Also featuring a moody musician son of Bluebeard, a fragile daughter of a lesser Cinderella, and many other borderless, cross-cultural figures of fairy tale, folklore, and proto-myth spanning continents.
A love letter to the study of interdisciplinary liberal arts and to coming-of-age narratives of adolescence and motherhood, full of mythic and pop-cultural archetypes and identity-cultivation through music, literature, film, fashion, infatuation and desire.
My take on “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” and Ungnyeo the Bear Woman of Korean origin myth, set on a college campus and stretching across a dual timeline between a mother and a daughter. Also featuring a moody musician son of Bluebeard, a fragile daughter of a lesser Cinderella, and many other borderless, cross-cultural figures of fairy tale, folklore, and proto-myth spanning continents.
A love letter to the study of interdisciplinary liberal arts and to coming-of-age narratives of adolescence and motherhood, full of mythic and pop-cultural archetypes and identity-cultivation through music, literature, film, fashion, infatuation and desire.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Thank you to the author & publisher for providing an early version and asking me to blurb this book!
From the moment I first stepped into the world of The Loom Tree, I was swept up in its spell. Angela Mi Young Hur has woven a fever dream of a modern fairy tale within the pages of a book that is at once an innovative campus novel, a reclamation of lost heritage, and a deep-dive into the world’s myths, all with a resonant and deeply human Korean-American experience beating at its fantastical heart.
From the moment I first stepped into the world of The Loom Tree, I was swept up in its spell. Angela Mi Young Hur has woven a fever dream of a modern fairy tale within the pages of a book that is at once an innovative campus novel, a reclamation of lost heritage, and a deep-dive into the world’s myths, all with a resonant and deeply human Korean-American experience beating at its fantastical heart.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews